8/14/2023 0 Comments Big sur waterfall drawing![]() Hawthorne Gallery is situated on that island. Most recently in January 2023, torrential rain and mudslides have once again conspired to keep much of Highway 1 closed. According to destination marketing organisation Visit California, the closures cost the region at least half a billion dollars in economic impact. The bridge reopened in October 2017, but the landslide wasn’t cleared until July 2018, 14 months and US$54 million worth of repairs later. Sandwiched between the closures was a 58km-long terrestrial island, accessible only by foot, helicopter or an extremely lengthy detour. A landslide in February 2017 closed Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, preventing travellers from San Francisco from reaching the region.Īnother landslide that May buried the highway at Mud Creek, cutting off traffic from Los Angeles. After the Soberanes Fire scorched over 53,000 hectares of land in 2016, a historically wet winter sent hillsides tumbling. Over the past few years, access to this route has been difficult for a number of reasons. Most of the land here is untamed – wild country only interrupted by a smattering of homes, restaurants, hotels and the Pacific Coast Highway, a scenic, two-lane river of asphalt that winds its way along the coast. It is a place where land and sea collide – where redwood-forested ridges plummet to the Pacific Ocean, turquoise waves batter rocky shores and mist clings to treetops rising skyward. ![]() Author and long-time resident Henry Miller called it “the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look”, while Jack Kerouac wrote of retreating to a remote canyon cabin in the area in his 1962 novel Big Sur. I made it a point to talk with locals and businesses along the route who were bracing for the impact of increased tourism and grappling with how best to welcome travellers back while protecting Big Sur’s magic.Ī rugged swath of coastline stretching 145km from Carmel-by-the-Sea to San Simeon, Big Sur is a version of California that inspires poetry and pilgrimages. I managed to visit a few years back when Highway 1 was fully open. ![]() This is the gateway to Big Sur and the northern entrance to California’s most revered road trip, but there have been many summers where it’s impossible to traverse the entirety of the region. Wildfires have closed the highway to traffic and winter storms have caused massive landslides that leave significant sections of the road closed for repairs. But on this rainy midweek afternoon, only a few hardy souls have abandoned their cars to snap one of the region’s most iconic scenes: the bridge’s graceful concrete arch bookended by rolling hills, with the powerful Pacific Ocean surf frothing below. ![]() The Bixby Creek Bridge pull-off along Highway 1, which hugs the weathered California coastline from Mendocino County in the north all the way down to Orange County in the south, is usually mobbed with visitors competing for parking spots and prime photography perches. California’s second most famous bridge – runner-up only to the rust-coloured towers of the Golden Gate Bridge – is draped in haze, the cliffs behind it shrouded in clouds feasting on the edge of the United States. ![]()
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